Fortnite teases Chapter 2 season 2 with cryptic messages

Fortnite is now in its longest season since the game's debut. The next season -- Chapter 2 season 2 -- is set to launch on Feb. 20, and to get the hype going, developer Epic Games started an international alternate reality game. Once the ARG started, the company then began sending cryptic tweets that seem to show a new addition to the game's map.

On Sunday, posters and digital advertisements for Fortnite began appearing in cities across the globe. These ads show a gold handprint and a local number to call that has a recording referencing an agency. The first advertisement seen by Fortnite fans was at a metro station in Brazil, according to one data miner.

The number on the ad serves up a recording that says, in Portuguese, "The agents were called. Card to access the safe purchased."

Another Fortnite poster, also with a golden handprint and the phone number, appeared in Russia.

A Fortnite data miner compiled the list of numbers, messages and locations into a tweet Monday. The recordings mention agents being recruited and then mobilizing. There's also a reference to a mission changing.

Another data miner compiled all the voice recordings into one video clip.

A German number was found Monday afternoon, and its voice message mentions map coordinates: D3, G4 and F2. So far there have been no discoveries in those areas.

On the official Fortnite Discord on Sunday, a bot called The Agency began recruiting members seemingly at random.

Then on Monday morning, the official Fortnite Twitter account sent a tweet saying "Transmission Intercepted" while the rest of the message was blacked out, like a document with redacted info.

Not long after that initial post, the account tweeted a second image with part of the blacked-out text revealed, showing "FN.CH02.S02," which likely refers to Fortnite chapter 2 season 2.

The Fortnite account tweeted a third time Monday with a third image that revealed more. This time, the word "origin" can be seen. The third image resembles a face, accompanied by several words.

Monday evening saw a fourth tweet from the Fortnite Twitter account. This time, the final text was revealed: "Origin == Au." The start of chapter 2 season 2 was also revealed: "022020" or Feb. 20, 2020.

Au is the periodic table symbol for gold, which ties into the gold handprint and theme used in the teases. The completed image, however, doesn't have a clear meaning as of now.

The Fortnite Twitter account tweeted Tuesday morning with another image and redacted info. The picture in the tweet is clearly a bundle of dynamite.

Tuesday brought another tweet from the Fortnite account. This time around, there was no redacted info revealed, but the image changed from dynamite to what appeared to be a propane tank.

Tuesday evening saw another tweet from Epic. This message revealed one of the redacted words to be "kaboom," and the image is what appears to be a torpedo with the word written on it. There's also a section of a map in the background that seems to be different from the current game map.

A few sleuths began piecing the map together with the in-game map.

One found what could be a spot for a new oil rig. 

Wednesday morning, the pattern continued with another tweet from the Fortnite account. This time, however, there were a couple hints to the existence of something known as Agent Meowsicles.

Agent Meowsicles was the name of an audio file found earlier in February by a data miner.

Another data miner ran that audio through a spectrogram to see the visual representation of the frequencies and found images of a cat head and a dead fish.

A cat head was also discovered on the Fortnite website when the chapter 2 season 2 ARG began.

Wednesday saw a second tweet from the Fortnite account with more objects shown in the image. The picture shows what looks like grenades in the shape of a mouse and a ball of yarn. Whether they're separate items or combined is hard to tell. The ball of yarn would go with the cat theme. There's also a blatant cat emoji in the image.

One data miner brightened the image to show two hidden symbols along with another piece of a map.

Wednesday evening saw another teaser for the next season. This time around, the short video clip gives a clear sign of something cat-related coming on Thursday.

What exactly this agency refers to, who Agent Mewosicle is and how this will change the game will likely be made clear in the days leading up to Feb. 20. Downtime for the v12.00 update will begin at 4 a.m. ET/1 a.m. PT Thursday.

Fortnite is available for PC, PS4, Android, iOS, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch .

This article was originally published on Feb. 17 and is updated as new information is discovered.

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